Abstract
This contribution considers a set of examples from Roman law that demonstrates the early beginnings and growth of a legal system as an anticipatory system. The examples are drawn from the law of contract and the law of civil wrongs (delict/torts) and span the period from early Roman law in the fifth century BCE to the “classical” period in the third century BCE. It analyzes how a society develops rules to deal with expected future situations, how this development is influenced by socioeconomic conditions, and how some of the norms that are laid down to deal with future eventualities prove to be extraordinarily durable and relevant over a long period of time, while others turn out to be durable, even though they have lost their relevance along the way. Overall, Roman law contained the essential characteristics of an anticipatory system, in that it was a reflexive system with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances in anticipating the future, albeit sometimes very slowly. Analyzing Roman law from the vantage point of how it functioned as a future-anticipating mechanism can help us understand better how such mechanisms evolve – and this understanding can, in turn, assist in the task of making legal systems effective, attuned to the needs of society, and enabled to pick the solutions that will be long-lasting.
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Visser, D. (2017). Anticipation in Roman Law. In: Poli, R. (eds) Handbook of Anticipation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31737-3_55-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31737-3_55-1
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